Mom kept talking about Balmorhea being one of her favorite spots. This are is full of springs which have a super-abundance of flowing water. The CCC, in the early 20th century, constructed a "V" shaped cement pool through which the spring water flows. There are even little fish in the pool.
We were there when it was Finch mating time. We got to watch their antics from an eye-level "perch"; our trailer windows were just about level with the roof of the Ramada where nests were being built.
One night I had the surprising privilege of suddenly...

Yesterday was a long drive on I 10 to Balmorhea State Park in West Texas. We had some rain along the way but it wasn't bad. By 3:00 p.m. we were setting up our RV at our campsite in the state park. We were here one night in early November 2009 on our big trip around the U.S. and I've been looking forward to this stop. It is a really cool spot, beautiful and unique.
We are in an oasis in a desert with the Davis Mountains serving as a backdrop. During the Great Depression, young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps built the park and a...

05Feb14 - This afternoon we arrived at Saddleback Mountain RV Park in Balmorhea, TX. around 2:30PM. We tossed around the idea of moving on to El Paso but after talking with several travelers coming from the west learned there was a terrible ice storm 20 miles ahead. Overturned cars, motorhomes that had been rear ended totaling their toads, trucks off the highway...black ice. We decided to stick with our original plan and spend the night in Balmorhea even if it is dropping into the 20's tonight. Cold is better than tearing up the coach and...

Bad start again- switch for the slides not working- appears to have a short. Kept playing with it until we got the slides back in so we could go to a repair shop to get it fixed. Bad news the guy here is unable to fix it so we will have to travel to El Paso as this will be our best chance of finding the parts we will need. This means we will have to spend at least one night out without putting the slides out. This was our first bad night in a Walmart parking lot. We had semis parked all around us and some of them kept their motors running...

An overnight stop on our way north. The trip was interesting and Balmorhea is a small quiet town.
When we left Lahitas we wanted to travel west along the Rio Grande but first we were warned that there were some narrow roads, sharp curves, and a very long steep climb with a very long steep drop afterwards. We were also told it was one of the prettiest drives in Texas, the steepest road in Texas, and watch out for falling rock. We asked a few other people who agreed with all those things but that a 5th wheel with a suitable truck could do it...

Anyone who has traveled along I-10 between San Antonio and El Paso knows that there aren't a whole lot of places to stop for an overnight stay. We found this one in the middle of nowhere and the price was right - $10 for full hookups! The only other business at this exit along I-10 was the gas station next door. West Texas! Lots of cactus and dust.

This was a very uneventful day, well, at least until the evening. We traveled from Deming, NM into west Texas. El Paso was a larger city than I thought; it seemed to go on and on as we passed through on the highway. We passed through a town with a Pilot gas stop but we still had 250 miles to go on our tank. We thought we would have no problem finding another gas stop. Wrong! The head wind picked up and our gas mileage went down. Our truck computer showed there was gas 50 miles ahead and we only had 25 miles left in our tank. We were really...

12/11/11
Another grey, cloudy day when we left at 11:00 a.m. Big Spring and it didn’t get any better the whole drive west on I-20 but it sure got foggier along the way, lowering visibility to less than a mile. Luckily, traffic was very light and the only thing we really missed were the large vistas in the distance as we passed by a lot of the oil fields. Somewhere along the way, though (I think it was in the Midland/Odessa area, the fog magically lifted and opened up views of miles and miles of what I call “dippy duck” oil pumps, moving...

After a good rest alongside the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, we tacked on a long drive to another unexpected oasis in west Texas in the middle of nowhere.
Balmorhea State Park surrounds an enormous clear spring pool that is half manmade and half natural state. The depth of the pool ranges from 3 feet to 30 feet in the middle of the channel. The shallow depths are concrete and the deep areas are boulders, rocks, aquatic plants and creatures. We saw catfish, sunfish, pupfish, and our favorite, a Texas Spiny Turtle. The incredible blues of...

Back onto I-10 for the 1 1/2 drive to Balmorhea, Texas, our next stop on our eastward journey. We stopped here because we want to do a day trip to the Ft. Davis National Monument and Texas Hill Country area. BJ and her husband, friends from Texas, always go to the state park here and rave about it. The McDonald Observatory is also about 16 miles from Ft. Davis so we want to stop there, too.
Nellie wasn’t a very good traveler today; not sure why. Taco has settled down a lot but she just meowed almost the whole trip.
Pulled into the...

Yesterday, we were able to find space at “Balmorhea State Park.” This is really an oasis in the desert. It features a 2 acre pool fed by an artesian spring. The spring flows at 3 million gallons an hour. The pool can be filled in 2 hours. It is a constant 75 degrees. It has been quite refreshing. I love swimming with the fish and turtles. The pool was built in the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It is lined with local limestone. The water is used to irrigate local farms. The Apache people used the water to irrigate their Peach...

Stayed at a welcome oasis. Passport park in Balmorhea. Wind was blowing, smoke from distant and nearby wildfires, temperature 102F.
We bought a bag of ice and had great cold drinks all day.
After the sun went down, we took a short walk around the campground looking at the cacti blooming in the Chihuahuan Desert.
A/C ran full time until the sun went down. We were comfortable and the refuge gave us a chance to rest.